Room for improvement: ten steps to a better service?
Some suggestions:
1: Please could Virgin do something about the pervasive toilet (or unsanitary) sort of smell in its Pendolinos? It’s always detectable as a faint background in the main coach, and becomes all the more unpleasant in the vestibule areas.
2: Can the Pendolino design be reconsidered, to make it less claustrophobic? The windows are too small, the seating too cramped with not enough tables, and the luggage space a bit mean. One can feel a little nauseous by the end of the journey.
3: Train air-conditioning design needs to be reconsidered, from a human comfort point of view. The seated passenger has a low metabolic rate over the duration of a journey. Air-conditioning proves too powerful too often - an unrelenting blast of chilled air on the head or body that even on summer journeys can necessitate the wearing of an extra layer, or hat.
4: May we please have the HST-type buffet car back? Indeed, any kind of buffet car on the new IEP trains.
5: A one-way off-peak fare ought to be charged at half the price of a return fare. To charge it as the return fare less £1 seems blatantly unfair.
6: Unless this has recently been fixed, would Virgin please ensure that its seat reservations are loaded up strictly before passengers first board the train (not five minutes before it departs)?
7: Cannot cycle carriage policies operate more practically, with cycles squeezed in a bit more?
8: On the smaller routes, with small one-, two- or three-car trains proving miserably inadequate on occasion, why not impose a national minimum standard of four-car trains?
9: Is Great Western Railway’s new IEP train, designed as two non-communicating half-trains joined together, the most sensible and efficient idea? What if there is only one trolley service on board? Answer: jump out at the next stop and run down the platform...
10: May there be fewer unnecessary or impertinent announcements? Do we need to be told to hold the handrail going down the stairs?